Optimizing Associates: From Forecasting Hours to Building Better Teams

Blog

Optimizing Associates: From Forecasting Hours to Building Better Teams

By Gary Angel

|

January 28, 2017

If store layout/merchandising and promotion planning are the core applications for in-store customer journey measurement, staff optimization is their neglected and genius offspring. For most retail stores, labor costs are a huge part of overall operating expenses – typically around 15% of sales. And staff interactions are profoundly determinate of customer satisfaction. In countless analytic efforts around customer satisfaction and churn, the one constant driver of both is the quality of associate interactions. People matter.

The human factor is a huge part of the customer journey. Some in-store measurement solutions treat staff interactions the way digital solutions treat employee visits – as data to be culled out and discarded. The only thing worse is when they leave them in and don’t differentiate between customer and staff!

No part of the customer journey and no part of the store has a bigger impact on the journey, on the sale, and on the brand satisfaction than interactions with your sales associates. And, of course, labor costs are one of the biggest cost drivers at the store. So optimizing staff is critical on every front: revenue optimization, customer satisfaction and cost management. It’s rare that a single point of analysis drives across all three with so much impact, highlighting how important associate optimization really is.

With staff data integrated into customer journey measurement, you know how often associate interactions occurred, you know how long they lasted, and you know how often they resulted in sales. Some stores will already track at least some of this as part of their incentive programs, but customer journey data provides a true measure of opportunity and productivity. Some of these data points are straightforward, but there are interesting aspects to staffing data that go beyond basic conversion effectiveness. It’s possible, for example, to isolate the number and impact of cases where staff interactions should have happened but didn’t. It’s also possible to understand optimal contact strategies, answering questions like ‘how long should a customer be in a section before a contact becomes desirable or imperative? ‘ Even more interesting is the opportunity to bring sports-driven team and player metrics to bear on the problems of staffing. You can understand which associate combinations work best together, how valuable team cohesion is, and the value spread between a top associate and an average hire. This is all invaluable data when it comes time to plan out schedules and staffing levels and, when paired with weather data, can also be used to optimized staffing plans on a highly local basis.

Finally, there are deep opportunities to use this data to optimize broader aspects of staff optimization. By integrating Voice of Employee (VoE) data with associate effectiveness, you can hone in on the golden questions that will help you identify the best possible hires. Creating a measurement-driven, closed loop system to optimize associate hiring decisions isn’t what people generally think of when they evaluate in-store measurement. But it’s a unique and powerful use of the technology to drive competitive advantage.

Questions you can Answer

Are there days/times when a store is over/under staffed?

Are there better options of positioning staff?

What’s the best way to optimize staffing teams and placements?

How much does training impact staff performance?

What questions should I ask when I hire new staff to identify potential stars?

How successful is any given associate in converting opportunities?

What’s the right amount of dwell-time to allow a customer prior to an associate interaction?